Kimberly Zieselman supports Intro 131 and global intersex rights
Kimberly Zieselman, senior advisor at Outright International, says she learned she was intersex at age 40. She says explicit statutory protection in New York City would provide clarity and visibility and could have global impact.
Hi, thank you.
Good afternoon, council members.
My name is Kimberly Zieselman.
I am an intersex woman, an attorney, a human rights defender, and the senior advisor for global intersex rights at Outright International, which is a global LGBTIQ human rights organization.
I also previously served as executive director of Interact Advocates for Intersex Youth.
I'm here today speaking both professionally on behalf of Outright and personally as an intersex person in support of Intro 131.
Like many intersex people, I grew up not knowing the truth about my own body.
In fact, I didn't learn I was intersex or what was done to me as a child until I was 40 years old.
That experience taught me firsthand the profound consequences of intersex invisibility.
Today, I work with intersex human rights defenders around the globe, many of whom are fighting simply to have their existence acknowledged and their basic rights protected.
Outright has documented cases around the world in which intersex people have been rejected by their families, expelled from schools, harassed at work, and subjected to physical and sexual violence simply due
to bias based on their perceived differences, their sex characteristics.
And yet here in the United States, intersex people remain largely invisible in our civil rights laws.
New York City has already recognized that discrimination against intersex people as prohibited under its human rights law, but those protections are not explicitly written into the statute.
And the rights that people don't know they have are rights that they may never exercise.
So this bill would change that by explicitly protecting people from discrimination based on sex characteristics, including intersex traits.
And New York City would provide greater clarity, visibility, and recognition to our community.
According to Interact, this would be the first explicit statutory civil rights protection of its kind in the United States.
And for intersex New Yorkers, that really matters.
And for intersex advocates around the world and community members, it also matters.
As we know, for better or for worse, what happens here in the United States often has a big impact globally.
We cannot protect people fully if we don't even name them.
So on behalf of Outright International, I respectfully urge the Council to advance Introduction 131.
Thank you.